wu wei

I’m trying to learn how to be still. I have become so busy, that I don’t have any time left for quiet resting and simple pleasures. I’m working two jobs (full-time accountant, part-time Mary Kay consultant), planning a family vacation for 31 people, volunteering once a week for a local ministry, planning a friend’s bachelorette party, and trying to make it to my family’s events like track meets, awards ceremonies, etc. while also trying to squeeze in time for necessary chores like dishes, laundry, housecleaning, and balancing my checkbook. I feel guilty if I stop moving. My body screams at me to rest, but how can I when there is so much to do? I am seeking God’s wisdom, trying to learn to be at peace in the midst of my chaotic existence. I’m working on wu wei…

wu wei - an attitude of expectant beingness

It’s hard for me to just be. I am always running around like crazy from one task to the next…but I’ve been realizing how vital it is - physically, spiritually, and emotionally – to make time to be still.

I’ve been reading a book (with my best friend, Jessi!) called “When the Heart Waits.” That’s where the wu wei revelation came from. It’s helped me realize things about me that I didn’t know were true; things that I had not contemplated. For example, I have mostly seen my life as happening in the future. I keep looking down the road, farther into the future, thinking that’s when my life will really get started.

“We think that the ‘real thing’ is concentrated in the next moment, the next month, the next year. We can go on and on, waiting for the next ‘happening’ of life, hurrying toward it, trying to make it happen. We live from peak event to peak event, from brightness to brightness, resisting the flat terrain of ordinary time - the in-between time. Waiting is the in-between time. It calls us to be in this moment, this season, without leaning so far into the future that we tear our roots from the present. When we learn to wait, we experience where we are as what is truly substantial and precious in life.”

Life is here. It is now. Live in it.